My Father's love
by Milli Moi
Summary: a short piece with Patsy speaking to her father upon going to Hong Kong


A/N this is an idea I had and it just had to spill onto the page, I hope you like the idea and the story. please let me know your thoughts.

There is one thing that every father imagines the moment he is told he has a daughter. My father used to speak of my birth, of how shocked he was a newborn could cry so loud and strong. I was his eldest, his first daughter and that gave me many responsibilities and him many wishes for the future. When I was ten, my mother and sister passed on, typhoid taking them within days of each other and so I became the one love in my father's life.

Arriving at the marina in Hong Kong I knew there was so much to be said, apologies for lost time, for heartache and for ignorance. I now knew so much I hadn't when I began to lose contact with my father aged fifteen. Now, after hiding from love so much as a young lady I had been swept off my feet by a type of love I could never have dreamt of. My hand reached into my pocket as I stood at the taxi rank. The photograph was dog-eared now, I had thumbed it too often. She wasn't aware of the camera in the photograph, and somehow it made her more and more beautiful each time I looked at it. My heart pined for her every day. I had fallen asleep on the ship's bunk each night with a scarf of her's tucked against my chest where I could smell the mix of her shampoo and perfume.

She was one of the reasons I had come. Delia had reminded me when we were so young, reminded my what it felt to love.

That is how it came about, that a few days of being in my father's home I went to his bedside with a story to tell. He needed to know I was happy, that I was safe. How I told him I didn't know. I had known I wasn't heterosexual since I had turned fourteen but he had never known, no one had ever known.

"Father," I began pulling up a chair beside his rather grand posted bed, surrounded by a curtain of mosquito nets currently hung up on the ceiling. He looked at me, so old. he had wrinkles and greying hair. He wasn't the same man I had seen ten years ago. His age was shocking, I had ignored the fact that as I got older and matured he was running past maturity into old age. Now he was dying.

"Father, I have some good news, I have a partner."

His grey-blue eyes widened and he watched me intently.

"I knew you would, a pretty girl like you. Who is he Patience?"

He. A man. I knew he would make the assumption, everyone did. After all, no one would presume a paedophile of an ordinary person, which should they presume a lesbian. I felt my heart sink in my chest, I couldn't do it. I couldn't break his heart, couldn't send him to the grave thinking I was only part human. He needed to know I was safe, know I was loved and there was only one way to ensure that.

"Dawid, Dawid Busby," I said the words quickly without realising I had made a play on her real name. The moment the words left my mouth they had felt wrong. I was lying, I knew I was lying, but I had to tint my own heart to help both my father's and Delia's. I had made him happy in that moment, I had made him feel I was the daughter he wanted me to be. Only I would know the truth, only I would have to carry the burden.

He spoke to me for a while, just day to day chatter, but as I got up to leave, to let him rest he caught my wrist. I looked straight back, worried he was in pain or in need of something he could not do himself - although every day he told me I was not there to nurse him, there was not a day gone by where I wasn't a nurse.

"Patsy," he began, that in itself made my heart jump. He rarely called me Patsy, saying the nickname cheapened my sunday name.

"I know this Dawid makes you happy. I know that I have never seen such happiness in your eyes as you talk about them. I may be an old man Patience, but I've always known you were a tad on the butch side. You don't have to hide it from me, I'm glad she makes you happy. Times change, the way people think changes too. One day the world will accept you both, you are always my little girl Patience, but in you - in the love, you have for this girl I see the son I never had. I see someone strong and brave, someone determined to protect herself and her own. Love her Patience, never let her go if you can help it, but do as I wish I had done more with your mother, and love her."


End file.
